Category Archives: America

Obama’s militarization of Africa expands to Niger

February 24, 2013 – 8:10 pm

Obama’s re-colonization of Africa continues to march on. The imperialist president has alerted Congress that he has sent 100 armed troops to Niger helping to set up the newest drone base in Africa. Supposedly the drone base is there to help the French imperialists fight Al Qaeda militants in neighboring Mali, but this is just cover for AFRICOM’s conquest of west Africa. Even though this is being reported in the mainstream media the general public doesn’t seem to care. For the political right this is totally fine and justifiable in their unending fight against Islamic terrorists, where as the cowardly left is completely fine with this provided the person implementing it has a “D” next to their name. The African people, who will suffer the blowback of such policies, are of course never consulted on wether or not they would like an American special forces operating an assassination drone base in their country. Obama relies on the support of authoritarian African leaders who will sell out their own country for money and military hardware from America. With all of the discussion in the past few weeks on drones, thanks in part to the Senate confirmation hearings of the assassination czar John Brennan, you might think that Americans would at the very least question the perceived benefit of yet another drone base in a foreign country. But alas the general public doesn’t bat an eye. What’s to worry about? It’s not like an influx of American military personal and advisers has ever had a negative effect on a foreign countries politics or internal conflicts.

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By porkinspolicyreview | Also posted in Africa, AFRICOM, Niger, U.S. policy | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

The cartels are coming! The cartels are coming!

February 22, 2013 – 9:01 pm

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Jan Brewer is hopping mad. What is it this time? Why those dam Mexican drug cartels that are about to march into Arizona. The Governor told Fox News all about her fact finding mission in which she flew in a Black Hawk helicopter and

saw them on the other side, the drug cartels, ready to come across in the middle of the night. It is not secure.

What Brewer thinks these cartels are going to do is beyond me. It is remarkable that a governor that lives so close to Mexico and drug war would be so naive. The cartels don’t want to march into America and conquer it, they want to traffic drugs and make money. Every so often politicians rehash this ridiculous notion that the cartels want to invade their biggest and most reliable customer. The cartels have no incentive to bring the violence from Mexico over into America; not when it would affect their massive profit margins. Jan Brewer is just looking to beat up on Mexicans and score cheap political points. Surprise surprise.

By porkinspolicyreview | Also posted in drug war, mexico, U.S. policy | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

99% of Americans are idiots

February 21, 2013 – 6:48 pm

Yes that’s right only 1% of Americans are actually intelligent.  According to a recently released Gallup poll a whopping 99% of Americans believe that Iran’s civilian nuclear program is in fact a threat “to the vital interests of the United States.”  It doesn’t seem to matter that the 16 alphabet soup intelligence agencies all believe that Iran is NOT building a nuclear weapon, Joe Schmo is still convinced that those evil Ayatollahs are intent on wiping us all out.  Even I was startled by such a large number of Americans convinced that Iran was building a nuke.  Is it really possible that only 3,153,709 out of 315,370,999 Americans are not complete morons?

By porkinspolicyreview | Also posted in Iran | Comments (0)

Iran shoots at US drone

November 9, 2012 – 12:50 pm

The cold war between America and Iran has just gotten a whole lot hotter. CNN has reported that Iran shot at an unarmed US drone. According to CNN, which never quotes Iranian officials and instead relies entirely on unnamed US officials, the drone was in international waters near Kuwait on a routine mission when it was fired upon. But as John Glasser points out

The claim that the drone was in international airspace cannot be confirmed, but it is dubious considering the difficulty Iran would have of firing on a small drone far from its own territory.

The claim that the unarmed Predator drone was engaged in “routine maritime surveillance” is also very dubious. First of all, just because it was “routine” has no bearing on whether its activity could justly be seen as hostile.

And if it was routine, and the Pentagon has nothing to hide, then the surveillance mission should not have been classified, as it was.

Thankfully there are still media organizations like Antiwar.com and the Christian Science Monitor who are questioning CNN’s reporting on this incident. For a great take on how CNN is merely acting as a PR firm for the White House read Glenn Greenwalds piece from yesterday.

All of this comes on the heels of Patrick Clawson’s disturbing comments on how the US could provoke a war with Iran. Clawson is the head of the Israeli funded pro-Israel think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

By porkinspolicyreview | Also posted in Iran, U.S. policy | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

What?! The NYT’s is a biased propaganda machine?!

September 26, 2012 – 11:16 am

Former NYT journalist Daniel Simpson speaks to RT about the Times war propaganda and bias towards our brutal political overlords.

By porkinspolicyreview | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Breaking the Silence Silenced by RNC convention

August 27, 2012 – 6:30 pm

The indispensable Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence has released a new report on children and youth in the Occupied West Bank.  Complete with video testimonies the new report paints a disturbing picture of the daily violence that the IDF inflicts on Palestinian children.  Now normally the American media would try their best to ignore this sort of report.  They may even try their best to some how portray this as yet another viscous anti-Semitic attack.  Lucky for the media the Republican National Convention will be eating up most of their time and energy.  So before you get all worked up over the RNC and DNC conventions take the time and read through the report.  If you cant read the whole report here are articles in The Independent, The Guardian and Ynet, all of which deal with the recent report.  When your watching the balloons falling from the convention arena ceiling, you may want to take a minute and think about how your tax dollars go to funding this decades long occupation.

By porkinspolicyreview | Also posted in Israel, Israel/Palestine, Occupied territories, Palestine, U.S. policy | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Assange extradition reaches new level of insanity

August 16, 2012 – 8:42 pm

The ongoing persecution of Julian Assange has reached a new level of absurdity today after it was announced that Ecuador had granted the founder of Wikileaks asylum. In the aftermath of Quito granting asylum to Assange the
British government sent this letter to the Ecuadorians

You should be aware that there is a legal basis in the U.K. the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act which would allow us to take action to arrest Mr. Assange in the current premises of the Embassy.
We very much hope not to get this point, but if you cannot resolve the issue of Mr. Assange’s presence on your premises, this route is open to us.
We understand the importance to you of the issues raised by Mr. Assange, and the strong public pressure in country. But we still have to resolve the situation on the ground, here in the U.K., in line with our legal obligations. We have endeavored to develop a joint text, which helps both meet your concerns, and presentational needs.

After sending this letter threatening to storm the Ecuadorian embassy the British government denied that this was a threat. This denial of a threat was followed by the sending of non-threatening police vans to surround the Ecuadorian embassy. Continuing in this vain of non threatening behavior by the British government, William Hague had this to say regarding diplomatic asylum

We will not allow Mr Assange safe passage out of the United Kingdom, nor is there any legal basis for us to do so. The United Kingdom does not recognise the principle of diplomatic asylum.
It is far from a universally accepted concept: the United Kingdom is not a party to any legal instruments which require us to recognise the grant of diplomatic asylum by a foreign embassy in this country.
Moreover, it is well established that, even for those countries which do recognise diplomatic asylum, it should not be used for the purposes of escaping the regular processes of the courts. And in this case that is clearly what is happening.

So are we really meant to believe that Britain is willing to break diplomatic conventions and storm a foreign embassy (exposing their diplomats to untold dangers overseas) and arrest Julian Assange so he can be brought to Sweden for QUESTIONING( he has never been charged) in a sex crimes case against him? The answer is no. Britain is jumping through all of these hoops at the behest of their American cousins. This has nothing to do with rape allegations. That is merely the justification for extraditing Assange to Sweden do he can be sent to the United States for trial or indefinite detention. If Britain were so forthright with prosecuting sex offenders they would have extradited Pinochet who had countless women raped while he was dictator of Chile. Luckily for Pinochet he commanded a greater deal of respect from the British government. Indeed if Sweden was so concerned with these two women who have accused Assange of rape, why have they turned down multiple invitations to question Assange in London? Because they too are doing the bidding of the Americans.

I know I am rehashing a lot of stuff here, but the point is to really make clear how extraordinarily outrageous this whole affair is. All of this is being done at the behest of our liberal democracy loving president to punish someone for exposing the truth about Americas crimes around the world. England, Sweden, and Australia are all willing to put their own diplomats in danger all because the president and America got embarrassed. This should instill a sense of shame and rage in all Americans. The saddest part of all of this is how blatant it is. No one is even trying to spin this as an extradition meant to uphold the law and bring justice for these alleged rape victims. As Marcy Wheeler so brilliantly points out, this whole diplomatic fiasco is doing exactly what Wikileaks did in the first place. Which was to

expose publicly what has become true but remains largely unacknowledged: the US and its allies find international law and protocols to be quaint. That was obviously true under Bush, with the illegal Iraq war and his disdain for the Geneva Conventions. But Obama, too, continues to do things legally authorized only by the most acrobatic of legal interpretations.

By porkinspolicyreview | Also posted in Julian Assange, U.S. policy | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Iran still isn’t building a bomb

August 10, 2012 – 10:56 pm

Once again the United States admits that Iran is not building a nuclear bomb. This time around it was in response to the erroneous claims that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has been making to the media in the Jewish state. Barak recently said that the American position on Iran was finally moving closer Israel’s. This was after Haaretz reported that there was a new NIE stating that Iran was in fact constructing a nuclear bomb. The Haaretz report is as false as Barak’s comments. No where in the Haaretz report is new intelligence cited. The same old lies about a supposed “clean up” at the Parchin military facility are cited as evidence by Haaretz, despite it having been debunked already. Haaretz also relies on anonymous Western and Israeli diplomats as sources for this new revelation. The other “reliable” source used by Haaretz comes from the violent Iranian terrorist cult group the MEK. I won’t even take the time here to break down how the MEK has absolutely no credibility.

So let’s be clear so we don’t have to go through with this for the two hundredth time. Iran is NOT building a nuclear weapon. They ceased construction in 2003 and have not begun again. This was the revelation that was made in the 2007 NIE, and it is still true today. As the L.A. Times pointed out five days ago, there is no nuclear program in Iran. It does not exist. For some further clarification on how ridiculous these claims are, here is former US Navy intelligence analyst John Schindler writing on his blog about these false claims:

A couple rules of the road. NIEs are very special things, exceptionally LIMDIS (limited distribution); when I was a full-time spook I didn’t read them – that was way above my pay-grade. That’s for the White House and related bigwigs. And they are always NOFORN: not for foreigners.

So, a few possibilities. Barak and his government are playing one huge head-fake with Obama, whom they openly dislike, even though he just dumped more money on Israel. Or, they have seen it – how, exactly, this former counterspy wonders – and are diming out DC in a very tough game of hardball.

Regardless, the rules of the spy game are clear and have been since Moses was a boy. When intelligence services share information, as they do every day, you don’t pass it to third parties without clearance. Ever. And if you do, eventually you will get burned and nobody will want to play marbles with you.

Barak and the other warmongers in Israel simply can’t wait to bomb Iran. Netanyahu and Barak are both savvy enough politically to understand that the American public by and large is gullible enough to so take that they say as fact. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times government officials or the mainstream media tells the American people that Iran isn’t building a bomb; they just don’t buy it. Netanyahu and Barak use this fact to brainwash Americans into blindly marching into war with Israel’s enemies. Israel’s enemies are not always our enemies. It’s time for Israel to fight their own battles. If that means attacking and oppressing Muslims through out the Middle East then fine, but we can not be dragged into this. The Muslim and Arab world already hates us enough. Can you really fathom what would happen if we worked with or allowed Israel to attack Iran? Can you imagine how fast Iran would build a bomb if they were attacked? All of the liberal western orientated Iranians that Americans love so much would side with the Ayatollah. A regional as well as global conflict involving other super powers could result in world war three. Once again the United States is driving down the road headed towards another 9/11.

By porkinspolicyreview | Also posted in International Relations, Iran, Israel, National Security, U.S. policy | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

More evidence of Afghan civil war

July 25, 2012 – 4:25 pm

A police commander from Bala Boluk District in Farah Province has defected to the Taliban; taking with him twelve police officers and a cache of arms. Authorities say he also poisoned seven other police officers for refusing to defect. There have been countless police and military personal who have attacked the Afghan state in the past couple years. Those in question though we’re already members of the Taliban. This incident on the other hand is the first recorded instance of someone within the Afghan government defecting to the Islamic Caliphate of Afghanistan. A civil war in Afghanistan will come to fruition when ISAF forces leave the country. More and more defections will take place, and many lives will be lost.

By porkinspolicyreview | Also posted in Afghanistan, South Asia, Taliban, Terrorism, U.S. policy | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

NRO collects personal information

July 12, 2012 – 9:04 pm

Thank God for McClatchy.  They truly are the one western news outlet that is actually engaged in serious reporting.  Their newest investigation has to do with the National Reconnaissance Office’s collection of personal information through polygraph tests.  The NRO is in charge of maintaining the United States spy satellites.  An exhaustive investigation by McClatchy has revealed that NRO polygraphers have been obtaining  “intimate details of the private lives of thousands of job applicants and employees, pushing the ethical and legal boundaries of a program that’s designed instead to catch spies and terrorists.”  This desire to catch spy’s is so great within the NRO, that cash bonuses are handed out to polygraphers who ask personal questions, known as Code 55 admissions.  This is all illegal.  The NRO has no jurisdiction or authority to ask personal questions such as, have you ever used marijuana, has you attempted suicide, do you suffer from depression.  Several whistle blowers from with in the NRO have come forward to expose what has been going on.  Of course the NRO has denied any wrongdoing with how they conduct polygraph tests. Here are two wonderful gems from the McClatchy article.  Both of these examples demonstrate how ridiculous the NRO’s poygraph testing is.  They also show how unconcerned they are over real criminal conduct.

Last September, a woman who’d held a clearance for more than 15 years and already had passed a national security polygraph was interrogated for more than four hours over two additional polygraph sessions, said Hinshaw, who said he’d been ordered to do it. Hinshaw’s supervisors launched the aggressive inquiry because they suspected that the woman had smoked pot more than the one time years before that she’d admitted to, records show. In the end, however, the only other information the National Reconnaissance Office extracted from her was that she’d been molested at age 16.

Here is the other more disturbing aspect of the NRO’s polygraph testing:

Despite the agency’s interest in criminal behavior, those who confess to serious offenses aren’t always criminally prosecuted even when child molestation is involved, McClatchy found.

In one case, a contractor who was a former Escondido, Calif., substitute teacher admitted to molesting a third-grade student in 2005 during outside tutoring sessions paid for by the girl’s immigrant parents. In a 2010 polygraph session, the man said that if he were asked, “ ‘Have you ever molested a 9-year-old?’ I’d have to say yes.”

The Escondido Police Department and school district where he’d been employed weren’t notified of the incident. After being contacted by McClatchy, the school district called the Escondido Police Department to file a report.When National Reconnaissance Office polygraphers asked supervisors in a meeting last summer why people weren’t being arrested on the spot after such confessions, they were told that the allegations were referred to the appropriate authorities, Phillips and Hinshaw said.

The agency refused to answer McClatchy’s questions about the molestation confession, saying in a statement only that its polygraph program “is in compliance with the law.”

I would urge everyone to read the full article.  The recent purging of whistle blowers, and the current administrations desire for secrecy, must be exposed for what it is.
By porkinspolicyreview | Also posted in Intelligence coummunity, U.S. policy, U.S. politics | Comments (0)